You can spend every day of your life for several years in one place, seeing and doing everything there, then move on from that place. For most people they will never return to that place. I find this fascinating to think about, and also rather strange; in particular, the fact that for all the time you spent there, you will never return - spending more or less time there doesn't change that fact.
From houses you used to live in, places you worked, schools you once attended, the list grows more and more. This isn't a case of these places no longer existing - that in itself is something to think about as well, but what I am focusing on here is the "entitlement" to essentially "reside" in these places for a set time. When that entitlement ends you can't recover it in most cases. The amount of time you spent there does not mean anything once you leave.
With houses we once lived in, this is perhaps the most self-evident. The fact you no longer live there means you can't come and go as if you do. With the exception of places owned by those close to us such as our parents, or friends who we visit who now live in those houses, there are few other instances where it even becomes possible for you to put your foot through the door. The first house I ever lived in is now owned by strangers to me, and is quite a distance away. To even be physically close to it, would take considerable time and conscious effort.
I don't live in the town where I grew up, the places I spent the first 18 years of my life are all places I have not even seen in over 10 years. From my Primary School, High School, and College, to my first, second, and third houses, and the two I lived in for a while temporarily - one due to renovation, one due to being made homeless. These are all places I spent a lot of time, but I will likely never enter again for the circumstances under which that would even be possible are convoluted to the point where it's unrealistic for me to suggest it would. [Not impossible, just so highly improbable]
There are other places which, after you have been there, the circumstances which brought you there are unlikely to ever occur again. My schools above would fall into that category, along with my University, my room in Halls of Residence, the places I rented as a student in my second and third years of my degree - both of which I believe have been sold off now. As well as the companies I have worked for over the years, most of which do not allow the general public to enter freely. Really the only places I have worked that did were retail outlets 2 of which have now changed hands.
The houses I mentioned are perhaps the most poignant of the list however, as the others arose from incidents and circumstance, those houses were for a time the places I called home. They were the places I lived, and I don't simply mean the places where I ate, drank, slept, and played, but the places where I lived my life, the love, the happiness, the loss, the sadness, the success, the failure, all of it. While I may never enter any of those places ever again, they remain a part of me, in my memory and always will. I find it quite moving at times when I have dreams about certain things and I am in those places in my dreams because they are where I was when they happened, they are the places I associate with certain emotions. There is that cliché that is often uttered when you feel anxious or scared, or just feel down, people say "go to your happy place" - what I find interesting about that concept is that, although there are places I associate with sadness, angst, money, education, love, sex, etc, there's no one place I would associate most with happiness. Maybe happiness isn't a place for me, maybe it's just a state of mind.
I feel...
I feel... I feel. I don't know if there's a word for what I feel right now, if there is it escapes me. Today I saw someone I haven't spoken to in over 3 years and while she shared some very happy news with me she also shared something that completely caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it at all. Someone I used to work with has been dead for over a year and I had no idea at all. The circumstances I won't go into out of respect for him but suffice to say he was in his early 30s and that saying is true you never know what people are going through.
I don't know what I feel right now. I have a lot of questions in my mind many of which I will never know the answer to, neither will anyone else. I find myself at a loss for words and yet at the same time my mind is racing with a million thoughts that I can't string together into anything coherent. I feel like I have been hit on the head, dazed and confused, trying to process something which I don't even know it's even possible to process.
So much of what I thought I once knew is being rewritten, things are changing not just the present and the future as the last year has been tumultuous, but now my past is even being rewritten and it feels like I'm a character in a science fiction novel where someone went back in time and fucked something up that's caused an alternate future, where only I remember the way it used to be. I guess on the flip-side you could argue that my perception of reality has been wrong all along and that the things which I perceive as changing are in fact the way they always were I was just blind to it. I would find that easier to accept as an explanation if it weren't for the fact that I know I am not alone in looking back and seeing things change. Whilst I have only learned about what happened today, my fried found out months ago and since we weren't in contact we never had a chance to talk - it was only a chance encounter that actually saw us meet today. Nevertheless she too expressed her shock and disbelief at what had happened.
The world around us is something we like to think of as constant, but really the only constancy is the existence of a world to perceive. Our perceptions of it, more and more, are proving to be unexpectedly fluid. What we know is only what we know now, it is not what we knew and will forever know, it is only what we know now. That revelation has led me to a very uncomfortable position where I'm questioning the very nature of "truth" - the thought of "alternative facts" is something that turned my stomach when I first heard it but, in moments like this, where your entire perception of people, places, and experiences, fundamentally shifts and what you believed to be true and what all evidence pointed towards being true, suddenly becomes false, and an alternate explanation is presented that is retrospectively reinforced with evidence that could never have been known at the time... - that whole thought process and where it leads is deeply disturbing.
What is truth?
I don't know what I feel right now. I have a lot of questions in my mind many of which I will never know the answer to, neither will anyone else. I find myself at a loss for words and yet at the same time my mind is racing with a million thoughts that I can't string together into anything coherent. I feel like I have been hit on the head, dazed and confused, trying to process something which I don't even know it's even possible to process.
So much of what I thought I once knew is being rewritten, things are changing not just the present and the future as the last year has been tumultuous, but now my past is even being rewritten and it feels like I'm a character in a science fiction novel where someone went back in time and fucked something up that's caused an alternate future, where only I remember the way it used to be. I guess on the flip-side you could argue that my perception of reality has been wrong all along and that the things which I perceive as changing are in fact the way they always were I was just blind to it. I would find that easier to accept as an explanation if it weren't for the fact that I know I am not alone in looking back and seeing things change. Whilst I have only learned about what happened today, my fried found out months ago and since we weren't in contact we never had a chance to talk - it was only a chance encounter that actually saw us meet today. Nevertheless she too expressed her shock and disbelief at what had happened.
The world around us is something we like to think of as constant, but really the only constancy is the existence of a world to perceive. Our perceptions of it, more and more, are proving to be unexpectedly fluid. What we know is only what we know now, it is not what we knew and will forever know, it is only what we know now. That revelation has led me to a very uncomfortable position where I'm questioning the very nature of "truth" - the thought of "alternative facts" is something that turned my stomach when I first heard it but, in moments like this, where your entire perception of people, places, and experiences, fundamentally shifts and what you believed to be true and what all evidence pointed towards being true, suddenly becomes false, and an alternate explanation is presented that is retrospectively reinforced with evidence that could never have been known at the time... - that whole thought process and where it leads is deeply disturbing.
What is truth?
Sweet?
There is a cliché that says Eskimos have a vast number of words for snow, the exact figure used varies greatly with some people putting it at over 1,000 and others putting it in the high hundreds. Truth be told the real figure isn't one you can pin down as there is no definitive "Eskimo" dictionary - even if there was it would only include words as part of the formal language and omit words used in slang. Inspired by this cliché however, and in an attempt to refute it, there have been several academic studies that have sought to analyse how many words can be considered part of Eskimo culture and can be considered as relating to snow.
The idea that language requires such vast collections of words to describe things that seem rather simple to us is something that at first seems almost inconsiderate. As if it implies language is incompetent when it comes to descriptive terms. On the other hand you could argue that it is not the language itself that is limited but rather the person employing it. That perhaps the creation of new words that mean the same thing is not born out of a need to have an accurate word but rather the speaker's limited lexicon, that it is their restricted vocabulary that prevents the articulation of existing ideas.
To give an example of this we can take a fairly basic idea, a simple word we often use which is common parlance - "sweet" - and analyse the concept it represents. Most people know what you mean when you say a food is sweet but do we actually agree on what constitutes sweetness? Would you and I both consider the same foods as sweet? Would you consider an Orange to be a sweet tasting fruit? Personally I would not, but I know many people who would. Likewise I know many would consider Honey to be sweet, yet again I would not consider it sweet. Both of these things I do not consider bitter which is the antonym but rather I would simply consider them as something more "middle-ground" that is not sweet enough to be considered sweet to me.
This throws open analysis of all five senses. Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, and Smell. These five senses are the fundamental percepts we use to experience the world yet for each and every one there will be wide ranging disagreement as to what constitutes what. It is often the middle that is the easiest to define. We speak of colours as being within the seven colour spectrum of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, all of which we can identify the most prominent of each but the spectrum itself is not clearly divided and the discussions and debates emerge when you begin to look at those gradient colours in between and you find arguments over what is considered to be what. The easiest example to give is to ask where "orange" starts and ends on the colour spectrum. You will begin to see people have very different opinions on what they would consider each colour range to be.
What I find fascinating about all of this is quite simply the fact that while we have collective terms that everyone uses and thinks very little of their definitions, we base our interactions and communications with others on the assumption they have the same definition as us. This can be cumbersome or complementary depending on how integral the distinction is; so that beggars the question, even though someone may say the same thing as you, do they actually agree with your internal conceptualisation of that belief?
The idea that language requires such vast collections of words to describe things that seem rather simple to us is something that at first seems almost inconsiderate. As if it implies language is incompetent when it comes to descriptive terms. On the other hand you could argue that it is not the language itself that is limited but rather the person employing it. That perhaps the creation of new words that mean the same thing is not born out of a need to have an accurate word but rather the speaker's limited lexicon, that it is their restricted vocabulary that prevents the articulation of existing ideas.
To give an example of this we can take a fairly basic idea, a simple word we often use which is common parlance - "sweet" - and analyse the concept it represents. Most people know what you mean when you say a food is sweet but do we actually agree on what constitutes sweetness? Would you and I both consider the same foods as sweet? Would you consider an Orange to be a sweet tasting fruit? Personally I would not, but I know many people who would. Likewise I know many would consider Honey to be sweet, yet again I would not consider it sweet. Both of these things I do not consider bitter which is the antonym but rather I would simply consider them as something more "middle-ground" that is not sweet enough to be considered sweet to me.
This throws open analysis of all five senses. Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, and Smell. These five senses are the fundamental percepts we use to experience the world yet for each and every one there will be wide ranging disagreement as to what constitutes what. It is often the middle that is the easiest to define. We speak of colours as being within the seven colour spectrum of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, all of which we can identify the most prominent of each but the spectrum itself is not clearly divided and the discussions and debates emerge when you begin to look at those gradient colours in between and you find arguments over what is considered to be what. The easiest example to give is to ask where "orange" starts and ends on the colour spectrum. You will begin to see people have very different opinions on what they would consider each colour range to be.
What I find fascinating about all of this is quite simply the fact that while we have collective terms that everyone uses and thinks very little of their definitions, we base our interactions and communications with others on the assumption they have the same definition as us. This can be cumbersome or complementary depending on how integral the distinction is; so that beggars the question, even though someone may say the same thing as you, do they actually agree with your internal conceptualisation of that belief?
Tackling Populism
Within the last year or so there has been a rise in populism in the Political landscape. Populism to put it simply is to gather a group of people disenfranchised with political process and to turn them against the political process itself. This can be left or right, or up or down on the political compass but ultimately it is fuelled by one thing more than any other - perception. Within every populist movement there is always an issue, sometimes more than one, depending on how deep the tranche goes. This issue or these issues, are perceived by the followers of the populist movement in one way.
There's no definition of what that one way is, because that is the cause behind which those of the movement rally. In modern times it is the perception that political progress has not delivered beneficial results, or to be specific, the globalisation process is not beneficial to those part of the movement.
This frustration is born out of a desire that has been embedded in our society for centuries now and which is beginning to prove self-defeating: that progress must be visible. By this I mean, there must be a visible sign of the progress made. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look at mobile phones. When they were first created they were like bricks, large, heavy, bulky etc, they weren't practical. As the technology evolved the size reduced, their capabilities changed, their design evolved. Over time these phones went from large bricks to the sleek smartphones we use today. Throughout this process of evolution, their designed changed visibly, many times. The designs that were experimented with varied greatly, in form factor, in colour, in their selling points, and yes, in their price too.
Today however we have reached a point in the evolution of smartphones where progress is no longer visible. There is no visible change to the design of these phones that is substantial. Changes made to processors, and capability of the hardware are not visual. The gains from upgrading from one device to a newer one are now marginal, and as such the smartphone market has been changing, it has been slowing. Manufacturers have been striving to find something groundbreaking or something that will change the market entirely but to no avail. The lack of perceivable changes in these devices has led most people to become complacent save for a few that are brand loyal and must have the latest version produced by that brand. In parallel to the populist movement in politics today, those that stay true to that pursuit of the latest version are those that are perceived by populists as being the "elite" of globalisation, whilst the others who have given up on this forward momentum are perceived to be those who are part of the populist movement.
It's worth noting here that nothing is this black and white in reality, this is simply an analagy to demonstrate how there can be two opposing sides who both like smartphones but disagree fundamentally with the consumer process. This is the direct parallel to be found in populism. Both sides claim to be defending democracy yet have fundamental disagreements over democratic process, and unfortunately the two view points are irreconcilable, they can not both be held to be right, they just aren't compatible.
While some will call me biased, and I admit I am, the important thing to realise here is that progress does not always have to be visible. Improvements won't always have results that can be perceived visually. With the example of smartphones, the evolution of the design of these phones has indeed stagnated, but the evolution of the underlying hardware continues. The evolution of the software that runs these devices continues. The test of this evolution and the perception of the advancement won't be perceivable to you until you find yourself comparing a much wider gap in the evolutionary process which will only become apparent when sufficient time has passed.
With politics as a whole, time has been passing, and this advancement has been constant. The reality of the world and the way it works today as opposed to the way it once worked is the same reality of an iPhone 7 vs the original iPhone - the detractors will claim nothing has changed, and that no advancement has been made, but when they find themselves in the reality of actually comparing one to the other, and having the 7 taken away and being expected to use the original while the rest of the world moves forward, the disparity will become self evident.
Populism will be self-defeating when the reality of a world people are nostalgic for that never existed to begin with hits home. The delusion that everyone coped just fine decades ago will quickly give way to reality. When you try to run the latest version of Call of Duty on a Windows 3.1 machine you will see for yourself how woefully inadequate it was. UK GDP per capita rose from $4,400 in 1975 to $41,800 in 2013. To assume the economic model of 1975 can sustain the UK at its present level is to assume an economic model that sustained an economy 1/10th the size it is today will be robust enough to cope - that's the equivalent of trying to play a game with a 4 GHz processor requirement on a 400 MHz processor, good luck with that.
To that end, the easiest way to defeat populism is to give it enough rope, it will hang itself. When it's dead and buried we will advance globalisation at an unprecedented rate.
There's no definition of what that one way is, because that is the cause behind which those of the movement rally. In modern times it is the perception that political progress has not delivered beneficial results, or to be specific, the globalisation process is not beneficial to those part of the movement.
This frustration is born out of a desire that has been embedded in our society for centuries now and which is beginning to prove self-defeating: that progress must be visible. By this I mean, there must be a visible sign of the progress made. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look at mobile phones. When they were first created they were like bricks, large, heavy, bulky etc, they weren't practical. As the technology evolved the size reduced, their capabilities changed, their design evolved. Over time these phones went from large bricks to the sleek smartphones we use today. Throughout this process of evolution, their designed changed visibly, many times. The designs that were experimented with varied greatly, in form factor, in colour, in their selling points, and yes, in their price too.
Today however we have reached a point in the evolution of smartphones where progress is no longer visible. There is no visible change to the design of these phones that is substantial. Changes made to processors, and capability of the hardware are not visual. The gains from upgrading from one device to a newer one are now marginal, and as such the smartphone market has been changing, it has been slowing. Manufacturers have been striving to find something groundbreaking or something that will change the market entirely but to no avail. The lack of perceivable changes in these devices has led most people to become complacent save for a few that are brand loyal and must have the latest version produced by that brand. In parallel to the populist movement in politics today, those that stay true to that pursuit of the latest version are those that are perceived by populists as being the "elite" of globalisation, whilst the others who have given up on this forward momentum are perceived to be those who are part of the populist movement.
It's worth noting here that nothing is this black and white in reality, this is simply an analagy to demonstrate how there can be two opposing sides who both like smartphones but disagree fundamentally with the consumer process. This is the direct parallel to be found in populism. Both sides claim to be defending democracy yet have fundamental disagreements over democratic process, and unfortunately the two view points are irreconcilable, they can not both be held to be right, they just aren't compatible.
While some will call me biased, and I admit I am, the important thing to realise here is that progress does not always have to be visible. Improvements won't always have results that can be perceived visually. With the example of smartphones, the evolution of the design of these phones has indeed stagnated, but the evolution of the underlying hardware continues. The evolution of the software that runs these devices continues. The test of this evolution and the perception of the advancement won't be perceivable to you until you find yourself comparing a much wider gap in the evolutionary process which will only become apparent when sufficient time has passed.
With politics as a whole, time has been passing, and this advancement has been constant. The reality of the world and the way it works today as opposed to the way it once worked is the same reality of an iPhone 7 vs the original iPhone - the detractors will claim nothing has changed, and that no advancement has been made, but when they find themselves in the reality of actually comparing one to the other, and having the 7 taken away and being expected to use the original while the rest of the world moves forward, the disparity will become self evident.
Populism will be self-defeating when the reality of a world people are nostalgic for that never existed to begin with hits home. The delusion that everyone coped just fine decades ago will quickly give way to reality. When you try to run the latest version of Call of Duty on a Windows 3.1 machine you will see for yourself how woefully inadequate it was. UK GDP per capita rose from $4,400 in 1975 to $41,800 in 2013. To assume the economic model of 1975 can sustain the UK at its present level is to assume an economic model that sustained an economy 1/10th the size it is today will be robust enough to cope - that's the equivalent of trying to play a game with a 4 GHz processor requirement on a 400 MHz processor, good luck with that.
To that end, the easiest way to defeat populism is to give it enough rope, it will hang itself. When it's dead and buried we will advance globalisation at an unprecedented rate.
Our Fucked Up Family
Our story begins with Brian who fostered Scott. Scott was never particularly pleased about this situation and longed for his own place. Brian already had a son named Will who was often forgotten. Brian met Erin and they got married. They were married for a while but unhappy with the way Brian treated her Erin divorced Brian. Erin was pregnant at the time and gave birth to a boy named Aaron. Brian and Erin fought over the child and eventually Brian got custody. So Aaron went to live with Brian, Scott and Will.
Brian decided to remarry after meeting Eugenie. Erin and Eugenie grew closer. After some time Brian decided to divorce Eugenie, thinking that he could do better. Scott had grown fond of Eugenie and didn't want to stay with Brian anymore so Scott tried to get his own place.
Aaron was also upset by the way Brian treated Eugenie. Erin wanted Aaron to move out and come back to live with her. Erin's closeness to Eugenie and the thought of Scott moving out leaving him with just Brian and Will made Aaron consider Erin's offer.
The story pauses here. What happens next isn't written. Scott will probably move out as he's wanted to for some time. He'll probably get a place close to Eugenie. As for Aaron he's quite unpredictable now. Aaron has turned against Brian because of the way he treated Eugenie. Aaron may well end up living with Erin again. Only time will tell.
If you're a little confused then here's the explanation:-
Brian = Britain
Erin = Ireland
Aaron = Northern Ireland
Scott = Scotland
Eugenie = The EU
Will = Wales
Read it again if you have to.
Don't drown in your ocean!
Sometimes we help others more willingly than we help ourselves. We offer advice freely to our friends, and we always know what to say when they have a problem. Solving other peoples problems, at least perceptibly seems to be a lot easier for us than solving our own. We don't have the burden of knowing every little detail about someone's life and their thought process to be able to accurately mimic their situation, so we find ourselves biased towards blue sky thinking, presenting solutions that are overly simplified. All that changes when you find yourself in their shoes.
When you are presented with the same problems, with the added burden of knowing every little detail about our own lives, and having our complete thought process employed in the decision making process. We get bogged down in the details and we end up talking ourselves out of the solutions we would have presented others, and we begin to appreciate why those people we offered advice to never took it when we did, because the reality is, there is always more than you know, you're never told the whole story. It is only our story that we can know in its entirety and even then we can still find surprises, discover things we never knew about ourselves, about our past, and about our present, which can all shape our future and change our lives completely.
When you think of this fluidity and the nature of life it's quite apt to think that water is perceived to be one of the most essential components to life itself, when life shares many of its properties. It adapts to its environment, it changes shape, it moves toward the path of least resistance, it is easy to handle in small amounts but can quickly become a flood, unstoppable, unyielding, and unforgiving. Perhaps most of all it is incredibly hard to separate some of the things life throws at us from within it - although not impossible.
Our lives are like oceans, they may look pretty to others from the surface (although perhaps not to some) but their depth is never truly known until you dive right in. The oceans may look peaceful and serene from above but they are filled with as many dangers as there are wonders, they can seem unending, they can hold darkness untold deep within, and it's very easy to drowned if you forget to come up for air once in a while.
So while the depths can be so alluring, and their wonders can be something you dedicate your life to exploring, it's important to take the time to resurface, to return to your base, and appreciate the beauty of the sky, forever out of reach, yet omnipresent, whether you can see it or not wherever you find yourself you know far above you it still remains.
When you are presented with the same problems, with the added burden of knowing every little detail about our own lives, and having our complete thought process employed in the decision making process. We get bogged down in the details and we end up talking ourselves out of the solutions we would have presented others, and we begin to appreciate why those people we offered advice to never took it when we did, because the reality is, there is always more than you know, you're never told the whole story. It is only our story that we can know in its entirety and even then we can still find surprises, discover things we never knew about ourselves, about our past, and about our present, which can all shape our future and change our lives completely.
When you think of this fluidity and the nature of life it's quite apt to think that water is perceived to be one of the most essential components to life itself, when life shares many of its properties. It adapts to its environment, it changes shape, it moves toward the path of least resistance, it is easy to handle in small amounts but can quickly become a flood, unstoppable, unyielding, and unforgiving. Perhaps most of all it is incredibly hard to separate some of the things life throws at us from within it - although not impossible.
Our lives are like oceans, they may look pretty to others from the surface (although perhaps not to some) but their depth is never truly known until you dive right in. The oceans may look peaceful and serene from above but they are filled with as many dangers as there are wonders, they can seem unending, they can hold darkness untold deep within, and it's very easy to drowned if you forget to come up for air once in a while.
So while the depths can be so alluring, and their wonders can be something you dedicate your life to exploring, it's important to take the time to resurface, to return to your base, and appreciate the beauty of the sky, forever out of reach, yet omnipresent, whether you can see it or not wherever you find yourself you know far above you it still remains.
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